Anna Akhmatova

Days pass, and years.

Everything changes,

and nothing.

Life scrapes to the bone.

Russia is my body.

Its veins flow with blood,

as mine do.

Escape would be

to sever an artery.

How do I separate

love of place

from what men do to it?

We thought we were done

with history,

that it was done

with us,

but again

'Death's great black wing'

looms over us

and again we must keep a vigil

at bolted prison doors.

Despair escapes through

winter's lips,

our faces twist

in a parody

of frozen grief.

We learn to beg.

I learn to prostitute words

so that Stalin

will release my son.

Faustian bargains

run rampant

we are reduced to them,

to survive,

to speak for the dead,

for the speechless,

the silenced.

Imbedded in each day

a crucifixion of hope,

goodbye.

We live on the manna

of words balanced

on a point of ignition,

their heat, their light,

the slim space

between thought

and articulation,

the place we store our words,

words into memory,

then burned in

"a ritual

beautiful and bitter'

samizdat.

We feed each other

the bodies of our dead,

hold to a belief

we can free their words

from 'tortured mouths'

in a final requiem

of 'one hundred million'

voices.